Conference of Creative Parties

Conference of Creative Parties

1 – 11 December 2015, daily 2-6pm
Gaité Lyrique, Paris

To truly meet the climate challenge we need to get creative. Climate change is often seen through a policy or scientific lens, and solutions are discussed only in behind the closed doors of political offices, boardrooms and negotiating halls. ArtCop21, launched ahead of the UN climate talks in Paris, aims to challenge those tropes. What is required is the active engagement of citizens worldwide in the urgency, value and opportunities of a transition away from fossil fuels and the embracing of a greener, sustainable future economy.

The Conference of the Creative Parties, proposed by COAL and the Gaîté lyrique, is a series of daily public talks built on imagination, creativity and collaboration to build and invent a new response to the climate challenge. From the 1st – 11th December 2015 over 60 inspiring and eloquent creatives, artists, architects, scientists and thinkers will come together for round-table conversations, debates and artistic performances addressing the climate challenge. Themes explored will include collective intelligence and digital climate service, deconstruction and clarification of language to rethink the climate and ecological crisis, provide practical cultural responses, citizen mobilization through culture, new models for the commons and reflection on UN negotiation models.

Alternating each afternoon between panel talks and one-to-one interviews with an international artist, these conversations focus their sights on a manifesto for the world of tomorrow. Shared internationally for signature, this worldwide statement will unite the global population in an inspiring, creative and viable ways to uphold the resolutions of Cop21.

All events will be live-streamed on the Gaîté Lyrique and ArtCOP21 websites, and will take place in French or English. Events are open to public and free to attend.

2:30 pm – Opening of the Summit of Creatives: Culture and the Arts Engage with the Climate Challenge for COP21

From Rio to COP21, what was the impact of the cultural industry on the society transformation? How has that changed over time, and in particular, how were the artists involved by policy makers? The opening of the Summit of Creatives is an opportunity to review the involvement of the cultural industry and inspire artists to get involved and put culture on the agenda of the negotiations.

2 pm – Producing without Reproducing : Creating new models

Artistic practices are transforming. Cultural ecosystems are being reinvented and create new mindsets on how to build a more sustainable world. How are these new types of knowledge, action and creation developed? What are the forces and dynamics at work? Whether in terms of new materials, shapes, or methods, new thoughts about our environment are emerging and in turn initiate new lifestyles and ways of saving and sharing.

2:30 pm – Transforming the Cultural Industry

With Patrick Degeorges, Philosopher and working with the Ministry for Ecology, Sustainable Development, Jordi Pascual, Coordinator of Agenda21 for the culture and of UCLG (ESP), John Crowley, team leader of SHS at UNESCO (UK), Sacha Kagan, founder and coordinator of Cultura21 (DEU), Alison Tickell, Head of Julie’s Bicycle (UK) and Diane Dodd, coordinator for Europe at IFACCA (AUS).

Moderated by Cees De Graaff, Head of DutchCulture, Centre de Coopération Internationale (NL).

This talk is organised in the frame of the ARTCOP21 professionnal workshops (December 3rd and 4th at la Gaîté lyrique).

5 pm – Face to face with George Steinmann, artist (CH).Moderated by the journalist Lydia Ben Ytzhak.In English and streamed

2:30 pm – The Power of Fiction: Imagining the Future

In a world upended by the arrival of an uncertain future, our society is forced to deal with the issue of its own narrative, to tell its story to construct itself and better decide its future. Fiction is transformative, and outlines the worlds we know and those to come. Science fiction, literature, speculations, poetry, whether with an apocalyptic bend or not, are means to give shape to reality and nurture new stories.

2:30 pm – The Arctic Is Paris – Expanding the Conversation

In English and streamed

Carte blanche to artist Mel Chin and writer Gretel Erlich around their Arctic Is Paris project.

The Arctic and Antarctic are territories which constitute a symbol of international union and embody humanity’s desires by giving a message to future generations. But these pristine areas are also vulnerable spaces where the effects of climate change are already visible, from ice cap melting to population displacements. This discussion will include film screenings and exhibit traditional artifacts of the Arctic and the Pacific Islands.

2:30 pm – Face to face with Stefan Shankland, artist (FR).Moderated by the journalist Lydia Ben Ytzhak.In French and streamed

3:30 pm – Collective Intelligence and digital Utopias

In French and streamed

A ‘collective intelligence’ meeting staged by Gwenola Wagon and Stéphane Degoutin, who directed film-essay “World Brain”. How to feed new or existing utopias in this time of ecological crisis? Following on from the research carried out for their project “World Brain”, the directors will discuss how to harness the group’s power to act and address digital utopias in terms of collective intelligence. How to make fire with a pack of chewing gum? Can trees form a universal network capable of competing with the Internet? Is humanity spawning a beast around itself? Do we have to become schizophrenic to keep pace with technological accelerations? A review of interesting options to imagine the future.

2:30 pm – The Race for Technological Innovation

In a time when everything is accelerating, artists take the time to take a critical look at the race for technological innovation. They dissect the tenets of its discourse and experiment with its tools. Together with researchers and scientists, they question the idea of technology being the only solution to climate change, alerting us to the lack of democratic control over geo-engineering projects, and developing projects involving alternate views of technology – open source, technical diversion, social hacking, etc.

2:30 pm – Language as a Battlefield

To name is to focus thought. Words shape reality. While diplomats and politicians negotiate hard over the removal or retention of a single word in a final agreement, some words seem to dominate the debate without being questioned: innovation, growth, universal, adaptation… This discussion, intersped with performances, will attempt to deconstruct linguistic hegemony and will question the realities that hide or reveal our discourses.

3 pm – Rebuilding the Commons

To talk about ecology rather than economy is a way to anchor initiatives and projects in a territory, in order to bring it to life and preserve it. In this context, new alliances are emerging to protect our “commons”. Whether it’s air, rivers, knowledge, commons are not only ‘goods’ to be respected and shared. Inextricably linking humans, non-human, and practices, they help us building a new political and economic model to deal with the environmental crisis.

6 pm – Closing Ceremony of the Summit of Creatives
With official delegates for culture and for the COP21, institutional partners of ArtCOP21, philosopher Dominique Bourg (CH) and the artist philippin Nikolo Salazar (with the support of the French Ambassy in Philippines). Moderated by François Nemeth (BEL), radio journalist radio at Rtbf